Are you ready for another round of madness? Starting at 12:01 am March 27th (your time), Forward Motion will hold a week-long writing dare. This dare can help you jump-start your new novel, push through the middle, or race to the end. Or, if you are really daring, you can write an entire novel in one week and go out like a literary lion for March 2012!

If you are working on short stories, poetry or even nonfiction articles, you can still take part by writing the equivalent of an anthology! All you need do is write the required number of words listed in one of the levels below. (That would be a LOT of poetry!) No emails, posts, blogs, journals or anything of that sort can count toward your total. Notes and world building can only count if they are incorporated into the larger work -- that is, if you are writing along and suddenly realize you need to know more about your aliens and write a bunch of notes that will help you expand them in the rewrite, then they count. You cannot, however, do nothing but notes or world building for this challenge.

The challenge will begin at 12:01 AM (your time) on March 27th and ends at 11:59 PM (your time) on April 2nd.

Remember, the manuscript does not have to be perfect. This is first draft material.

You have a few hours to prepare yourselves and your loved ones for this madness. Make out your wills. . . or at least your outlines. Post here if you intend to join in.

Choose a category from the list below. And remember, this is all fun.

Right?

The choices:

Level 1 -- 1000 words a day -- 7,000 words for the week.

Level 2 -- 2000 words a day -- 14,000 words for the week

Level 3 -- 3000 words a day -- 21,000 words for the week

Level 4 -- 4000 words a day -- 28,000 words for the week

Level 5 -- 5000 words a day -- 35,000 words for the week

Level 6 -- Completed first Draft Novel of 40,000 or more wordsThis level can include previous material to reach a completed first draft, but you will have to write 40k of it during this week.

Level 6a -- Completed first draft novel of at least 30,000 words plus other workIf you finish the book you choose for the 40,000 word challenge and you are short of the 40k words, you can work on something else as well -- but at least 30,000 words of it has to be on the first novel and you will still have to write as many words as you need to reach the 40,000 word mark.

You can change levels during the Madness if you find you are doing better or worse than expected.

Are you ready for the challenge? Sign up now, and we'll see how many of us are really crazy this year!